He dived back into the water
by John Proctor
Summary: Missing scene from 3x22 The Departed, Stefan saves Elena from the river but she dies anyway and Meredith tells him she's been turned. "Elena stopped struggling, her heart ground to a halt and the motion of her body succumbed to stillness." I wrote this like 3 days ago. I've always meant to, but I forget.


He dived back into the water. This is not happening, not again, not after I - He shook his head to stop himself from remembering the day that he almost drove her off the Wickery Bridge; he couldn't deal with his guilt right now, he just needed to get Elena to safety.

She was scared and that scared Stefan. She was the strongest, bravest person he'd ever known, and seeing the fear in her eyes as she struggled for breath made him more determined to save her. He pulled off the car door with a hard tug and threw it aside. Her safety belt was jammed and though Elena wouldn't have been able to pull it out, Stefan did with ease before lifting her out of the car and slinging her over his left shoulder as he swam to the surface.

Although Stefan was fast, the next few moments were the longest of his life. He heard her heart beating fast as her legs kicked viciously in her struggle for oxygen. But within the few seconds it took him to reach the surface, Elena stopped struggling, her heart ground to a halt and the motion of her body succumbed to stillness.

Stefan now had her rested on the cold hard tarmac of the renovated Wickery Bridge and was pumping her chest up and down above her heart. "Elena, come on, Elena stay with me." He held her nose and leant down to blow air into her lungs and then resumed to compressing her chest "6, 7, 8…" he counted. "Elena, you can't die. I won't let you die." He continued CPR but Elena was unable to cough up even a drop of the ingested water that was drowning her lungs. Nothing was working. Stefan reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone, but the penetration of the water damaged it so much that 911 was an impossibility. "Shit!" Stefan threw the phone down and it smashed on the road under the pressure of his terror.

He hauled Matt – breathing, just knocked out – onto his left shoulder and Elena over his right before speeding across Mystic Falls to its Hospital. Although the extra weight should have slowed him down, his determination to save his – his friends meant he got there in just a few short moments. "I need a doctor right now!" he demanded bursting through the doors of the hospital's emergency room, his commanding presence drawing everyone's attentions to him.

Within minutes, Elena and Matt were fitted with all sorts of tubes he'd never gotten the chance to learn the names of, were placed in beds and whisked off to separate places in the hospital. And Stefan was left there, standing alone with a couple of forms to fill in.

He felt weak. He reached out a hand to the nearest wall and held himself up with it; and realising that there was nothing left he could possibly do to help the woman he loved, he finally let himself shed a tear. Stefan would blame himself if she didn't make it: he blamed himself already and shuddered at all of the things he thought he could have done differently - he didn't swim fast enough, he didn't run fast enough, he saved Matt first_. Why did he save Matt first?_ He asked himself, a question to which he really had no satisfying answer - she told him to, and he loved her.

He thought about all of the things he should have said that he didn't, and the past year he didn't have with her; and in that one moment regretted every sip of blood he ever drunk for Klaus, even if that meant that Damon didn't survive. He shook that thought away. It wasn't a possibility. Stefan thought about how she might never look at him again, the way she used to, with those big brown eyes filled with love and admiration and he'd never hear her laugh… "Stefan?" a voice snapped him out of it.

"Meredith, how is she – I mean how are they?"

"Stefan, would you like to take a seat?" Meredith tried, reaching out a hand to his arm.

"What is it, what's happened to her?" could tell it was Elena. He could just feel it.

Dr Fell sighed sympathetically. "I'm so sorry Stefan- "

"She's gone" he breathed – half a question, his mind suddenly venturing into places his heart didn't ever want to go, and his eyes filling with water. Before he was only dreading it, but it was real.

"Yes… but not really" Meredith got his full attention.

"What do you mean 'not really'?" he quizzed.

"Stefan there's something you should know, the damage to Elena's head earlier, it was worse than I let on. It wasn't a concussion, it was a cerebral haemorrhage."

"So what? What does that mean?" he asked desperately, clinging to every word she spoke, just hoping.

"She was bleeding from the brain." She went on "She wouldn't have made it Stefan… so I helped her." Meredith looked down ashamedly.

He took a moment, "You did what?" Stefan's face creased into an angry glower. "Where is she?"

"The morgue." He shoved her hard and she fell into the wall of the other side of the corridor, before marching determinedly around the hospital looking for the morgue.

His thoughts were muddled, he didn't know what to think. All that kept playing in his mind was that day "_I don't want to be a vampire Stefan, I never did." _At first, it was more of a panic than remorse, when he was scrambling through the hospital in a frenzied search for Elena. It hadn't yet hit him that he could not save her now.

"MORGUE" a sign, on a silver plaque with bold, black letters read. Stefan paused and all thoughts flew away from him. He took a step toward the double-doors and pushed one uneasily with a hand. It squeaked open.

The room was dimly lit with rows of freezers against one wall, a metal table with equipment layed out next to it and Elena: pale and lifeless, lying on a table I the middle of the room, unmoving. Stefan used to watch her sleep – he smiled at the thought of it. But this was different, she didn't look peaceful, she wasn't dreaming and someplace else – she just wasn't there. Her body was vacant, empty, she was completely still and her face was swept of all expression.

Stefan's stomach lurched. He felt utterly sick. Elena wasn't expressionless, she was the open and sharing and emotional. She would laugh and cry and worry and get mad but she always _cared_. He grabbed the metal trashcan nearby from the floor and hurled up the contents of his last meal. The stomach acid stung his throat and the taste was bitter and vile.

Throwing the trashcan aside, he picked himself up and walked straight over to Elena. Stefan was crippled by the sight of the person he loved, dead; and his knees crumbled beneath him as he was overwhelmed by grief. He collapsed onto the floor, grabbing at the table for support – but his hand instead fell upon hers. It was cold and rough. He held it tightly and, collapsed on the floor, he wept into it "This is my fault, I'm sorry."


End file.
